Touching the blade every morning,

Touching the blade every morning,
and kissing the wounds you yourself inflicted,
for something that slips away in the blink of an eye
something you paid for with the pulse of your days,
with the blood of your starless nights,
with a sleep that never came to visit you
And finally, you reach the summit
but not that summit you dreamed of in your youth,
with whose clouds you had made a pact;
not that golden peak whose image you wove,
with every step, into the mirror of your eyes
The summit you stand upon is quieter than stone,
colder than the wind you left behind,
and lonelier than all the paths you burned to reach it
Victory is not in that moment when your foot lands on the peak,
not in the cry that dies in your throat from sheer exhaustion,
not in the wistful gaze downward
where all the roads, like old scars,
stare back at you.

Victory is this:
that when you reach the top,
you lift your head,
and a laugh from the depths of your being
like a spring in a desert of stone
bursts from your chest
Then,
you look upon all the rubble that hurt your feet,
upon all the precipices that stared into your eyes,
upon all the nights whose lamp was not trimmed
not with a curse, but with a smile
And you see that the path itself
was a greater summit,
and you were standing right in its midst,
but your eyes were fixed only on the distant height

And if, at that peak,
you collapse breathless to the ground,
and while no one is watching
nothing but a mountain of pain collapsed upon your chest
you see that it was not worth it, that no pleasure remains,
then reaching it is, itself, the greatest defeat
If one day you reach the summit,
before your knees bend, look behind you,
and smile at all the dead you buried along the way

Success is not in conquering the peak,
but in the pride of looking upon the path you have conquered;
and not in arriving,
but in the art of standing,
and laughing,
at all that was,
and all that never came to be